Structural health monitoring (SHM) involves implementing a strategy to detect and characterize damage in engineering structures. It uses sensors to measure responses and detect changes that could indicate damage. The data is processed to extract features and develop statistical models to distinguish between damaged and undamaged structures. SHM is important as it improves safety, allows for timely maintenance, and helps develop better future designs by providing real-world performance data. While sensors cannot directly measure damage, SHM uses the sensor data to provide damage information through feature extraction and analysis.